drone

drone

or

remotely piloted vehicle,

a pilotless craft guided by remote control. Aircraft, ships, and land vehicles can be designed or outfitted as drones; underwater vessels—both piloted and pilotless—are usually called submersiblessubmersible,small, mobile undersea research vessel capable of functioning in the ocean depths. Development of a great variety of submersibles during the later 1950s and 1960s came about as a result of improved technology and in response to a demonstrated need for the capability.....Click the link for more information., however, and the term drone is most typically applied to remotely controlled pilotless aircraft. Such drones were originally used largely by the military. Small, relatively inexpensive military drones have served as targets in combat practice since the 1940s, while high-performance models have been used in hazardous reconnaissance missions and to carry and launch missiles against enemy targets without exposing pilots and their far more expensive aircraft to antiaircraft fire.

Depending on the mission, drones can be equipped with armament, radar, video cameras, lasers, or sensors for chemical or biological weapons; drones typically can stay aloft without refueling for much longer periods of time than piloted airplanes. Guidance of the drone can originate from an airplane, a ship, a ground station, or a satellite link; a satellite link enables a drone to be guided by an operator stationed thousands of miles away. Building upon the successful use of drones in the Second Persian Gulf War and in Afghanistan, the Homeland Security Department adopted unmanned aircraft to track drug smugglers, illegal immigrants, and terrorists along the U.S. borders. In the United States and elsewhere, drones are increasingly used by law enforcement and security agencies. As drones have become smaller and increasingly less expensive, they also have employed by criminals (such as smugglers) and by otherwise less technologically sophisticated military forces and armed groups.

Nonpolicing scientific, public safety, and commercial uses include monitoring crops, helping fight forest fires, atmospheric and wildlife research, filmmaking and photography, and news and sports reporting. The drones used for many of these purposes are typically smaller devices that are lifted and propelled by helicopterlike rotors. Such drones are also increasingly popular with recreational hobbyists. The commercial and recreational use of drones has led to significant concern over the aviation and public safety and the privacy issues associated with their more widespread use. The Federal Aviation Administration is responsible for operational and safety regulations governing the commercial use of drones, and now requires that users register drones weighing more that .55 lb (.25 kg). Recreational users are relatively unregulated (compared to commericial users).

Early attempts to use unmanned aerial vehicles are documented as early as the U.S. Civil War. Both Union and Confederate troops launched balloons loaded with explosives in the hope that the balloons would come down inside ammunition or supply depots and explode, but the balloons were at the mercy of the prevailing winds and proved largely ineffective. Toward the end of World War II the Japanese launched similarly ineffective high-altitude balloons loaded with incendiary and other explosives in the hope that winds would carry them to the United States, where they would start forest fires. A U.S. project at about the same time, called "Operation Aphrodite," involved using a modified manned aircraft as a cruise missile. The pilot would take off, get the plane to altitude, pass control to a manned aircraft through a radio link, and then bail out. The somewhat more successful German V-1 was essentially an early cruise missilecruise missile,low-flying, continuously powered offensive missile designed to evade defense systems. Although the German V-1 (1944) was a simple cruise missile, the cruise missile did not realize its potential until the 1970s, when the United States sought to develop a.....Click the link for more information., not a remote-controlled drone. By the Vietnam War the technology to launch and control drones had evolved. Initially, pilotless aircraft equipped with video cameras flew over North Vietnam to provide reconnaissance data; drones were later used to drop leaflets, interfere with electronic communications, and locate surface-to-air missile batteries. By the early 21st cent., small, hand-launched drones were used by U.S. ground forces to scout otherwise obscured areas, and very small bird- and insectlike drones had been developed.

Bibliography

See study by N. Friedman (2010).

drone

[drōn]

(aerospace engineering)

A pilotless aircraft usually subordinated to the controlling influences of a remotely located command station, but occasionally preprogrammed.

(invertebrate zoology)

A haploid male bee or ant; one of the three castes in a colony.

drone

i. An aerial vehicle that is remotely or automatically controlled. Normally used as a decoy to confuse enemy radars. Also used as a target or tow vehicle for tow bodies that are meant to be used as targets.ii. The low, monotonous, humming sound of aircraft engines heard from a distance.

drone

1

1. a male bee in a colony of social bees, whose sole function is to mate with the queen

2. a pilotless radio-controlled aircraft

drone

2

1.Music

a. a sustained bass note or chord of unvarying pitch accompanying a melody

b. (as modifier): a drone bass

2.Music one of the single-reed pipes in a set of bagpipes, used for accompanying the melody played on the chanter

In spite of her immense age (three, years), it rang between the canon-like frames as a pibroch rings in a mountain pass; the fanners changed their note, and repeated it up in every gallery; and the broad-winged drones, burly and eager, ended it on one nerve-thrilling outbreak of bugles: "La Reine le veult

Other figures, such as the dog in the second, third, and fourth books, or the marriage of the portionless maiden in the sixth book, or the drones and wasps in the eighth and ninth books, also form links of connection in long passages, or are used to recall previous discussions.

In front of the openings of the hives, it made his eyes giddy to watch the bees and drones whirling round and round about the same spot, while among them the working bees flew in and out with spoils or in search of them, always in the same direction into the wood to the flowering lime trees and back to the hives.

Blunt-bodied drones whizzed to and fro with a noise like miniature high-powered automobiles, as if anxious to convey the idea of being tremendously busy without going to the length of doing any actual work.

At dawn and at sunset the howler monkeys screamed together and the parrakeets broke into shrill chatter, but during the hot hours of the day only the full drone of insects, like the beat of a distant surf, filled the ear, while nothing moved amid the solemn vistas of stupendous trunks, fading away into the darkness which held us in.

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